THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SOCIETY OF LONDON Roger Johnson, Mole End, 41 Sandford Road, Chelmsford CM2 6DE e-mail: [email protected]

no. 217 7th December 2001

To renew your subscription, send 12 stamped, self-addressed Switzerland, Brazil, Canada, Belgium, Russia, Italy and Spain! The envelopes or (overseas) send 12 International Reply Coupons or names of John Hall, Hirayama Yuichi, Carolyn & Joel Senter, Stu £6.00 or US$13.00 for 12 issues. Dollar checks should be payable to Shiffman, Sébastien Le Page, Mia Stampe, Jean-Pierre Cagnat and Jean Upton. Dollar prices quoted without qualification refer to US Wladimir Bogomoletz alone should have the Sherlockian grinning dollars. Please note that I give such addresses and prices as I have. happily. This latest addition to a distinguished series can be had for If I don’t provide details of importers or agents, it’s because I don’t £9.00 post-paid from John Hall (20 Drury Avenue, Horsforth, have those details. LeedsLS18 4BR), or for $12.00 plus postage from Classic Specialties From CADS 40 I learn of the deaths this year of two fine British (PO Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219, USA). actors. Norman Rodway was Dr Watson to Ronald Pickup’s Watson’s Weapons — For and Against by Dr Tim Healey is the Holmes in Cecil Jenkins’ 1990 BBC Radio 3 play The Singular Case latest publication of the Friends of Dr Watson. If you want to know of Sherlock H and Sigmund F . Paul Daneman played Watson in what life was like for the British army medico in Afghanistan 120 Gillette’s play at the old Birmingham Rep in 1952, to Alfred Burke’s years ago, it’s all here. This 44-page A4 booklet costs £7.00 or Holmes; in 1968 he was the Sholto brothers in BBC TV’s production $14.00 to non-members (sterling cheques payable to Richard J. of The Sign of Four with and Nigel Stock. Richard Stacpoole-Ryding; US dollars in cash, please), from Richard Dalby notes the death on 31 October of Jenny Laird , whose long Stacpoole-Ryding, 14 Western Close, Letchworth, Herts. SG6 4SZ. acting career included playing Mrs Hudson in The Masks of Death Over the years various pranksters have devised comic captions for (1984), with Cushing and John Mills. Victorian illustrations, most of them genuinely funny, thank heaven. Barrie Roberts is one of the most reliable writers of new Sherlock Eric Monahan’s new 40-page booklet Sherlock Holmes Illustrated, Holmes stories, so I’m delighted to see his first novel Sherlock with Alternative Captions stands up well, and would make a nice Holmes and the Railway Maniac newly reissued in an attractive silly Christmas present — for a friend or for yourself. You can buy paperback edition by Allison & Busby (Suite 111, Bon Marche copies post-paid at £4.70 or $8.95 from Highcliff, 14 Silver Bridge Centre, 241 Ferndale Road, London SW9 BJ; £6.99). He captures the Close, Broadsands Park, Paignton, Devon TQ4 7NW. Watson-Doyle style better than most, and he knows his Canon and Eric tells me that Sayers on Holmes: Essays and Fiction on Sherlock his history. It’s astonishing that no one else seems to have thought of Holmes, published by the Mythopoeic Society (Joan Marie Verba, having Holmes investigate the anarchist outrages that culminated in PO Box 1363, Minnetonka, MN 55346, USA) at $9.50, is in stock at the siege of Sidney Street in 1912. Sherlock Holmes and the Railway Crime In Store (14 Bedford Street, London WC2E 9HE) at £8.99. Maniac is an engrossing and intelligent read. I look forward to seeing the rest of Barrie Roberts’ books in paperback. On Thursday 13 December there’ll be a sale of ‘valuable printed books and manuscripts’ at Sotheby’s (34-35 New Bond Street, Also from Allison & Busby, but in hardcover at £17.99, is The Secret London W1A 2AA; phone 020 7293 5000), which will include Diary of Dr Watson by Anita Janda. It’s not a new idea to present the various works by Arthur Conan Doyle as well as items from his uncensored truth behind the published writings, but other writers library (among them Bram Stoker’s The Mystery of the Sea inscribed have used it to parody the Canon; Ms Janda gives us a generally to Sir Arthur ‘from his old friend’ the author), and several plausible and always entertaining account of what really happened in watercolours by Richard Doyle. These lots are ‘the property of a those cases of the Severed Ears, the Phantom Hound, Black Jack of great nephew of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’. (*Any prizes for guessing Ballarat and the rest. In addition she gives us a self-portrait of an which one?*) Viewing is on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and intelligent, thoughtful, courageous and very likable man. It’s right Wednesday. Well worth a visit, I’d say. that Watson’s name should be in the title: The Secret Diary of Dr Watson is his story, not Holmes’s, and the better for it. I wonder if There are new catalogues available from Janus Books (PO Box Ms Janda will be tempted to continue the diary . . . I almost hope not. 40787, Tucson, AZ 85717, USA) and Classic Specialties (PO Box 19058, Cincinnati, OH 45219, USA) — both with a good amount of Just published at £8.99 by the Mercat Press (53 South Bridge, Sherlockiana. Classic Specialties carry a lot besides books, of course. Edinburgh EH1 1YS) is McLevy: The Edinburgh Detective by James McLevy. The splendid cover photograph of Edinburgh in the 1890s CADS 40 is, as always with this splendid magazine, full of gives a slightly false impression, but it’s the only wrong thing about stimulating and entertaining articles about Crime And Detective this excellent book. McLevy, an Irishman with no love for the Stories. Nothing specifically Sherlockian this time, but CADS is a English, entered the city’s police force in 1830, became a detective must if you’re at all interested in the field. The price is: UK £5.00; three years later, and wrote these memoirs in the 1850s. Quintin Europe £5.50; USA (airmail) $10.00, (surface) $9.00. Sterling Jardine, who has written a foreword to this new edition, observes: cheques should be payable to G.H. Bradley; US payments should be ‘McLevy was clearly a one-off, a character who would have trouble in dollar bills. (Geoff Bradley, 9 Vicarage Hill, South Benfleet, fitting into a modern police force, yet whose perception and Essex SS7 1PA.) knowledge of his streets and his subjects would have made him too Play the Game: Victorian and Edwardian Sporting Songs is a valuable to be excluded from it.’ This welcome new edition of his delicious CD of ditties on the subject of, well, just about every sport writings shows us the city into which Arthur Conan Doyle would be known to our great-grandparents — cycling, rugger, boating, golf, born in 1859 — but that’s a bonus. McLevy: The Edinburgh billiards, soccer ... and huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’. Arthur Conan Detective is a cracking good read. Doyle is represented as the author of ‘A Hunting Morning’, from his Volume 11 of The Shoso-in Bulletin sums up the international nature 1898 book Songs of Action . Listening to Ian Partridge, Peter Savidge of our great game, boasting as it does contributors from Japan, the and the Song & Supper Club, with Jennifer Partridge on piano, is like USA, the UK, the Czech Republic, France, Denmark, Taiwan, attending a really good smoking concert at an Edwardian country house — gorgeous! The CD is available at major record stores or direct from the publishers, Just Accord Music (PO Box 224, Holmes , with Clive Merrison & Michael Williams, as a boxed set of Tadworth, Surrey KT20 5YJ) at £9.99 post-paid. 36 cassettes with Bert Coules’s book, at £112.50. The recent, very entertaining BBC TV drama series Murder Rooms is It must be the Silly Season. According to the Torquay Herald just out on video. I need hardly remind you that these fictional Express for 2 November, Rodger Garrick-Steele now accuses Arthur mysteries deal with the friendship between the young Arthur Conan Conan Doyle of murdering Charles Dawson — to cover up his Doyle and his mentor Dr Joseph Bell — recreating them, in effect, as (ACD’s) perpetration of the Piltdown hoax. What next — the Watson and Holmes. Charles Edwards (who was, astonishingly, invasion of Poland? allowed to play the part clean-shaven) is pleasant enough as Conan The Harpooners of the Sea Unicorn will talk about ‘The Blue Doyle, but it’s Ian Richardson who’s the real star of these films . He Carbuncle’ after dinner on 15 December (Michael E. Bragg, Box is quite superb as Dr Bell — authoritative, coldly scientific, but 799, St Charles, MO 63302-0799, USA). humane. The plots, particularly of The White Knight Stratagem , are elegant and ingenious (though The Patient’s Eyes does tend to give The Annual Dinner of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London will the impression that Conan Doyle must have been incapable of be held at the House of Commons on Saturday 5 January. The Guest inventing a character or a situation, instead drawing everything from of Honour will be the Commissioner of the City of London Police, his own experience). The supporting casts are impressive — John Perry Nove, QPM. The previous evening there’ll be a Club Night at Sessions, Rik Mayall, Annette Crosbie, Anton Lesser, et al. And by the New Commonwealth Club in Northumberland Avenue, to which golly, the films look good. The four Murder Rooms videos — The members, prospective members and their guests are welcome to turn Patient’s Eyes (IMC390), The Photographer’s Chair (IMC391), The up any time between 6.00 and 9.00 pm. On the day after the dinner Kingdom of Bones (IMC393) and The White Knight Stratagem there will be the now-traditional ‘hair of the dog’ get together at (IMC394) — cost £12.99 each, or £34.99 for the boxed set. Quite a lunchtime, at the Royal Commonwealth Society. saving! The same day The Illustrious Clients will hold their Victorian BBC Learning will shortly release three videos from the Beeb’s Dinner in Indianapolis (details from Steven T. Doyle, 540 West archives: The Picture of Dorian Gray with Jeremy Brett, Count Sycamore Street, Zionsville, IN 46077, USA), and there’ll be a joint Dracula with Louis Jourdan, and — ta-da! — The Hound of the meeting in Winchester of The Franco-Midland Hardware Baskervilles with Peter Cushing and Nigel Stock. These are intended Company and The Glades of the New Forest to investigate the for schools rather than home use, and it looks as if they’ll be in PAL bibliography of The Hound of the Baskervilles (6 Bramham Moor, format only. There’ll be quite small quantities, and they won’t be as Hill Head, Fareham, Hants. PO14 3RU). On 11 January, the Annual cheap as home videos, but individuals will be able to buy copies. The Dinner of The Baker Street Irregulars will take place in New cost will be £19.99 per video, plus postage (in the UK) of £1.50 for York, as will the Baskerville Bash. Information about The Baker one video and £2.50 for two or three. Or — a special offer — buy Street Irregulars can be had from Michael Whelan (7938 Mill two of the three titles for £35.00 all in. You’ll have to order direct Stream Circle, Indianapolis, IN 46278, USA). There’s a web page for from Video Offer, BBC Learning, Room A3022, 80 Wood Lane, the Baskerville Bash at www.baskervillebash.org , or write to P.J. th London W12 0TT, and cheques or postal orders should be payable to Perry (346 East 87 Street, #4-A, New York, NY 10128-4944, BBC Worldwide. Or you can e-mail Gavin Collinson at USA). [email protected] with credit card details. If these releases The Poor Folk Upon The Moors will enjoy their AGM and Annual are successful, it’s probable that the rest of the 1968 Cushing series Lunch at the Globe Hotel, Topsham on 26 January. David Stuart will follow, and perhaps more BBC Holmes. Davies will be guest speaker (details from Shirley Purves, Lea Look out for The Lost World on BBC TV and The Further House, Couches Lane, Woodbury, Exeter EX5 1HL). On 3 February, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on BBC Radio 4. (*There’s a lot of The Franco-Midland Hardware Company and The Baker Street the BBC in this issue, isn’t there?*) Branch Lines will meet in Salisbury to investigate the London & South-Western Railway route from London to Dartmoor (6 Real Victorian pantomime thrives at the famous Players’ Theatre, Bramham Moor, Hill Head, Fareham, Hants. PO14 3RU). The under the Arches at Charing Cross — rhyming couplets, marvellous birthday meeting of The Northern Musgraves will be held on 9 puns and all. This year’s panto, running until 10 February, is February, and among the topics for discussion will be The Valley of Aladdin, or The Wonderful Scamp . The Players’ is a club, but you Fear (Anne Jordan, Fairbank, Beck Lane, Bingley, West Yorkshire don’t have to be a member to attend the panto or the regular Late BD16 4DN). At their dinner meeting on 16 February The Illustrious Joys music hall — and it’s probably the best value of any West End Clients will discuss ‘The Abbey Grange’ (Steven T. Doyle, 540 theatre. Call the box office on 020 7839 1134. West Sycamore Street, Zionsville, IN 46077, USA). The Players’ has a very nice restaurant, but so has the Sherlock Periodicals received. The Formulary , December 2001 ( The Friends Holmes , which is just a couple of minutes’ walk away in of Dr Watson , Brian Scrivener, 94 Reigate Avenue, Sutton, Surrey Northumberland Street. The pub does excellent beer as well, and of SM1 3JJ). The Camden House Journal , November 2001 ( The course it houses the memorabilia originally collected for the Sherlock Occupants of the Empty House , PO Box 21, Zeigler, IL 62999, Holmes Exhibition at Abbey House in 1951. The restaurant offers a USA). The Illustrious Clients News , November 2001 ( The grand view of Holmes and Watson’s sitting-room, which has been Illustrious Clients , Steven T. Doyle, 540 West Sycamore Street, decorated for Christmas (by Mrs Hudson, we presume). You can Zionsville, IN 46077, USA). Communication , November/December book lunch or dinner on 020 7930 2644 — or just call in for a drink. 2001 ( The Pleasant Places of Florida , Jeff & Wanda Dow, 1737 Some more ideas for treating yourself (or a friend) this Christmas. To Santa Anna Drive, Dunedin, FL 34698, USA). The School Report , provide access to the material in the first 40 issues, the publisher has Winter Term 2001 ( The Priory Scholars , Horace L. Coates, 21 issued Sherlock Holmes: The Detective Magazine — The Electronic Butcombe Road, Leicester LE4 0FY). Archive on CD-ROM in a limited edition of 100 copies at just And the invaluable newsletter Scuttlebutt from the Spermaceti £39.99. Everything’s there, pictures and all, in full colour. It’s not Press , November 2001 (Peter E. Blau, 3900 Tunlaw Road NW #119, perfect (the indexes list me more often than not as ‘Robert Johnson’), Washington, DC 20007-4830, USA). but it is very easy to use, and very helpful. I think it’s well worth the selling price. Order from the Admin. Dept, PO Box 100, Chichester, I’ll be taking a break now until around the end of January, so Jean West Sussex PO18 8HD. The Baker Street Irregulars have issued a and I wish everybody CD-ROM edition of the complete Baker Street Journal at $100.00 plus $10.00 postage outside the USA or $5.00 within the USA (Leslie Klinger at 2029 Century Park East, Suite 3290, Los Angeles, THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE CA 90067, USA; e-mail [email protected] ). SEASON! And Phil Attwell points out that Choices Direct (PO Box 190, Peterborough PE2 6UW; phone 01733 232800; e-mail [email protected] ) offer the complete BBC Radio Sherlock Roger Johnson